POTSDAM — Understanding Novae will be presented by Solar System Ambassador Elaine Fortin on Friday, Sept. 27, at 7 p.m. at Potsdam Public Library.

A nova is expected in 2024 or 2025 in the binary star T Coronae Borealis (the ‘Blaze Star’ in constellation Corona Borealis), located 2900 LY away. It last had a nova outburst in 1946 and eighty years before that, putting it on an eighty year period.

This talk will discuss the understanding of novae, a form of astronomical transient, before and since the surprising knowledge learned from NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray telescope launched in 2008.

About 10-15 novae (maybe even double that!) happen in our galaxy each year. Records of novae have only been kept since telescopes have been powerful enough to capture them. It is expected that many stars are recurrent, possibly every thousand years or so, but T Coronae Borealis is special because this will be another of its outbursts seen and studied by modern day astronomers.

It is hoped to be visible to the naked eye but expected to last only a few days before it returns to its quiescent state.

Elaine Fortin is a Solar System Ambassador, a volunteer position through JPL, funded by NASA. She is a Trustee of the Adirondack Sky Center and Observatory, an amateur astronomer and former employee of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.